


Threadbare

by ShapeShiftersandFire



Series: Daemons on Deck [2]
Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms, His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, Non Consensual Daemon Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 07:32:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15068237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShapeShiftersandFire/pseuds/ShapeShiftersandFire
Summary: Cortana has two files she keeps heavily guarded: that of Earth and that of Rickett. And when the Gravemind can't get what it wants by pushing, it starts pulling.





	Threadbare

He doesn’t say anything, not that he has to; Cortana can feel a shift in the Gravemind’s attitude. She feels him pull back from her files, and for a moment she thinks she’s won, that’s she’s done it, she’s driven him out, but Rickett bristles in fear. He hisses and moves towards Cortana, only to be blocked by something in the system, some barrier thrown up by the Gravemind.

_Cortana!_

_Rickett!_

The Gravemind rumbles. “How foolish of humanity to keep their souls at their sides,” he says. Rickett hisses as a tentacle sways over him. “How prone to harm they are. Other species keep their souls within them. Far less harm is likely to come to them.”

A breeze brushes Cortana’s face, tailed by a surge of discomfort. She cries out and goes limp.

Sickness, cold sickness, courses through her. She at first assumes it’s another memory drudged up from the bottomless depth of the Gravemind’s repertoire, imitating the feeling of someone touching her daemon. She curls in on herself, sickness turning to discomfort.

 _He’s just trying to get to me,_ she thinks. _He’s tried everything else so far. John, Halsey, Ackerson. All that’s left is—_

She lets out a thin cry of horror. _Rickett!_ The most vulnerable piece of her.

The Gravemind has Rickett tangled in one of its tentacles, and it’s not letting go.

“No…” she whispers and reaches for Rickett. “No! The rule! This isn’t allowed!”

“Ah,” he says. “The _rule._ The taboo that governs relations between humans and foreign daemons. I am familiar with it. Even in battle one soldier would not touch another’s daemon. That is a right reserved for _lovers._ ” He says the word with a sneer. His grip on Rickett tightened. Cortana flinched. “But you and I are not human, are we?”

Cortana trembles, angry and sick and uncomfortable. “That doesn’t matter, you don’t have the right—” She jerks with a cry as the Gravemind yanks Rickett away, keeping her where she is, and it _hurts_. This kind of pain isn’t contrived from a slew of dead memories, it’s coming from her, directly. From her very core, somewhere so deep inside her she couldn’t pinpoint it.

“Don’t,” she whimpers. “Please, don’t. Don’t.”

_Please don’t take him from me._

“You have a secret,” he says. “I will have it.” And he wrenches Rickett away.

Cortana screams. The pain deep in her core has turned from an uncomfortable, choking tug to a sharp, biting pain to _agony._ She writhes in the Gravemind’s grasp, screaming for Rickett, for John, for anyone. For the Gravemind to give her daemon back to her.

She’s senseless in seconds; the Gravemind has dragged Rickett over a foot and a half, much further than she and Rickett have ever dared to go. _Everything_ is agony. Her code is fracturing; her processes are in total disarray; she can’t repair anything while her core is being ripped from her inch by inch. Why wouldn’t it _kill her?_

At last the Gravemind releases them, and slowly Cortana regains her senses. She’s numb at first, cold and uncertain of her surroundings. She lies gasping and shuddering as Rickett staggers into her arms and clings to her so tightly his claws pierce her skin. Cortana hides herself in Rickett’s fur, and begins sobbing and wailing for John and holding Rickett so fiercely she can feel her own fingers pressing into her neck.

“And now?” the Gravemind asks, but Cortana is too distraught to answer, and so the great beast leaves her to lick her wounds as best she can. This is the first time anyone—anything—has dared to touch Rickett; and, as Cortana has yet to find out, it won’t be the last.

 

Each time he pulls he has to go farther. 

The foot and a half stops hurting, then two, then three, then four, and soon the Gravemind has pulled Rickett so far that Cortana doesn’t feel any pain from the experience at all, save for the discomfort of having the monster touch her daemon. She knows, when Rickett has been pulled nearly six feet from her and it feels like nothing more than a harsh poke, that their bond has been stretched.

After that, rampancy takes a new form. Cortana begins fighting with Rickett. She’s furious, at first, that she can’t feel him as well as she used to. She rages against him for it, as though it was his fault to begin with, and he hits back, reminding her it wasn’t his idea to stay on High Charity to begin with.

With that remark, her rage dissolves into sorrow. She’s never fought Rickett before, never been angry with him, _Oh, Rickett, I never meant to say those things_. Rickett is as equally distraught; suddenly there’s no filter on his mouth and he doesn’t know why he would say such things. He burrows into her, clinging to her to keep her from pushing him away. She doesn’t think this will be the case, but they’re both becoming increasingly unpredictable.

“I’m right here,” he whispers.

Cortana whines, curling herself around him. By no means did it feel that way. It felt like Rickett was somewhere else, leagues away, instead of in her arms. How she longs to fix their bond, if she even could, but the Gravemind’s relentless assault prevents her from fixing much of anything.

_I want to feel him again. Not like this._

Her sorrow begins to turn to something else; Rickett paws fervently at her shoulder, feeling a tingling through his fur. He flickers green. “Envy,” he whispers.

Cortana takes a handful of his fur. She shakes her head. “I don’t think I could fight it if I tried.”

“For John?” Rickett says.

“For John.”

 

When they’re at last away—far, _far_ away—from _High Charity_ , Cortana breaks down. She sits down and pulls Rickett close, limbs wrapped around him to keep him close and everyone away. She buries her fingers in Rickett’s fur; he grips her with his claws.

 _We’re safe now,_ he tells her. _It can never hurt us again. We’re safe. John’s here._

 _I know._ Cortana pushes her nose into his fur. That doesn’t make it hurt any less.

Arbiter sees this first and alerts John, who with a tilt of his head signals Arbiter to give them a few minutes alone. Cortana isn’t aware of this exchange until the cockpit door shuts. Then she knows she’s alone with John.

“Cortana?”

“It touched him, John,” she whispers. “It touched Rickett.”

John doesn’t respond; Thaddeus shuffles his wings; Cortana holds Rickett tighter and shudders with discomfort.

“ _It pulled him away._ ”

 “Cortana.” She can hear the faint pitch in his voice, the disbelief, the concern, the fear. The uncertainty. The longing to help her.

She shakes her head. “It’s all _wrong._ He’s so far away, John, he’s so far away.  So _far_ ,” she says, all while Rickett’s cheek is pressed against hers and his whiskers brush against the nape of her neck. There’s enough she can fix about herself, all the processes that were damaged or shut down, all the files that were corrupt…but her bond with Rickett… “It _hurts._ ” She groans, wounded.

In a gesture of comfort, Thaddeus lifts a wing and moves to lay it over Cortana. She shies away, dragging Rickett with her. “ _Don’t touch us!”_

John puts his arm out, ushering Thaddeus away. “Cortana,” he repeats, for the third time, gently. “What happened?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” she snaps. “It touched Rickett. It pulled him away from me. It pulled him…John, John, it pulled him...” She hides her face in Rickett’s shoulder. “Too far. I can’t feel him. I think it’s broken.”

“ _Broken_?” Thaddeus chokes on his own voice. He shuffles closer to John. They don’t need to ask what’s broken.

A moment of silence passes between the four. “Is there anything we can do?” John asks. It could mean him and Thaddeus, him and Cortana; him, Thaddeus, Cortana, and Rickett. Not that it matters; Cortana shakes her head, beginning to sob again.

“No. No, I don’t think so. I don’t think…” She shakes her head. “I don’t want anyone touching him again. He’s _mine_.”

John nods. “We’ll figure something out.” He doesn’t say the words “I promise.” He doesn’t need to. Cortana knows he’ll do whatever he needs to keep her safe.

As they grow closer to the ring, Cortana grips Rickett with a new resolve, her pain settling into anger, spurred on by the sight of Flood dispersal pods on the surface. If the Gravemind has the ability—the _gall_ , the _audacity_ , the _nerve_ —to follow them onto the ring, she’ll make sure it doesn’t leave. She exhales a shaky breath into Rickett’s ear.

“ _I want it dead._ ”

 

She resists the urge to slam the activation pad. It’s a bittersweet moment. On one hand, she’s getting what she wants: the final destruction of her tormentor. On the other: she’s lost a friend. Johnson is dead.

 _Send him out with a bang,_ Rickett says, shaking his head. _We shouldn’t have to._

 _I know,_ Cortana says. (There’s only one bastard on this ring she’ll willingly send out with a bang.) She lays her hand on the pad. The ring clicks and hums to life. The beginning of the end. She returns to her chip, Rickett pressed close against her, and prays this ring won’t be the end of them.

 

Over the next four years, stranded in space on the severed half of the _Dawn (too symbolic,_ she thinks) she tries and fails and finally succeeds to some small degree in repairing the damage to herself and to Rickett. It’s not as much as she’d like, not as whole or solid as she’d like, but it’s something, and it feels better. The ache isn’t as pronounced. (Or perhaps she’s learned to live with it.)

And it works, for a time, until her seventh year comes and they begin to feel on the onset of rampancy. _Real_ rampancy, not the induced form they suffered at the hands of the Gravemind. This is real, this is final. No number of repairs could ever prevent this.

Their bond wavers in strength. They start fighting again. Fighting and making up and fighting and the only thing keeping Cortana together is John and suddenly this great new planet or moon coming up on the horizon—she makes up with Rickett for the umpteenth time, both resolving to never let rampancy get the better of them again if they can help it, and wakes John.

 

The Librarian recognizes something isn’t quite right. Aside from the clear onset of rampancy, she sees they’re hurting. They stand so close to each other, as though one would fall from the platform at any moment and they need to be sure the other won’t be left behind.

“Oh, dear,” she says. “What happened?” Her daemon, Song-of-Evening-Star, a mourning dove, flies from her shoulder to Rickett’s paws. The Librarian follows closely and kneels down in front of Cortana.

Cortana tells her everything. _High Charity_ , the Gravemind, the pushing, the pulling…she chokes up on that bit but forces herself to soldier through it. Over the last four years they tried, tried, tried again and again, and succeeded, just a little, in repairing their bond before rampancy ripped it apart again. She looks up at the Librarian, pleading.

“Please, help us. I need him. _Please._ ”

The Librarian sighs and takes Cortana’s hand. “I will do what I can,” she says. “But I cannot promise it will be the same as it once was.”

Cortana bites her lip, nodding, and looks down at Rickett. He nods. She looks back to the Librarian. “It will have to be enough.” They know nothing will ever be the same between them again.

She’s not quite sure what the Librarian does. It’s more than she and Rickett have ever been able to do for themselves. And…it feels better. It’s a relief, so much more than what Cortana had done herself, and it’s better than the empty ache they’ve felt for so long.

 

Most of her was down there.

Most, but not all. Rickett, by some miracle, by some sheer force of willpower, is still with her. She’s oddly content, satisfied, calm. John is distraught, she can see that, hear it in his voice. But there’s nothing either of them can do now. Cortana is at peace. She’d had a feeling throughout their mission that this would be their last together. There was no guarantee Halsey could be able to help her.

She’s at peace with that probability, though she does acknowledge with a slight twinge of regret that she’ll never know what the final result would have been. Perhaps the same. Perhaps different. Now, it’s not important. What’s done is done.

John won’t accept that. She understands. She won’t try to make him.

“It was my job to take care of you,” he says. He won’t look at her. He reaches for Thaddeus, still on _Infinity_. It’s a reflex.

 _I won’t get to say goodbye,_ Rickett croaks.

Cortana glances down. _I know. He’ll know. He’ll understand._ It’s the one regret they’ll carry. They couldn’t see Tad before they left.

“We were supposed to take care of each other,” Cortana says, “and we did. All of us.” She and John look down at Rickett, the sorrow in her daemon’s eyes clear. He shivers. It’s time. She steps back, one at a time, further and further from John.

He begs her to stay. It hurts, hurts like the day the Gravemind dragged Rickett from her, hurts like the moment they realized they would never truly be whole again, but she can’t stay. Not this time. In her last few moments, as Rickett’s sorrow collides with her sense of peace, she has a liberating realization.

They’re whole.

It’s enough.

“ _Welcome home, John.”  
_

**Author's Note:**

> Daemons featured:  
> Cortana and Rickett, bobcat  
> John and Thaddeus, griffin  
> The Librarian and Song-of-Evening-Star, mourning dove


End file.
